There is a lot of chatter from the usual suspects about how Biden will need to “reassure” allies and clients following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but that seems like a serious mistake. First, it’s not at all obvious that allies and clients genuinely need any reassuring, and when the US has made the mistake of catering to the complaints of allies and clients it has led to some of the more serious foreign policy errors of the last twenty years. It was the misguided effort to “reassure” Saudi Arabia and the UAE six years ago that resulted in the disastrous policy of US backing for the war on Yemen, and that policy has been maintained for all this time on the grounds that the US could not “afford” to alienate these governments. The US needs to offer fewer reassurances to its allies and clients, because their dependency is a liability for the US and it does them no favors, either.
US allies and clients are so accustomed to relying on the US that they neglect their own defenses and capabilities, and then when the US does something they disagree with they find that they are not able to act independently even if they want to try. Far from viewing the US as unreliable, they are all too comfortable with the US bearing most of the burden for their security and show no interest in assuming more responsibilities. Contrary to all the yowling we have heard over the last two weeks, the US is perceived as being so reliable that these other governments feel no urgency to improve their own defenses. An interesting example of this appears in a recent Financial Times report from Taiwan, where most of the population doesn’t anticipate a Chinese attack and the government has not made much of a concerted effort to bolster the island’s military capabilities:
“The government should be raising people’s awareness of the military threat. But instead of doing real things, they just talk, telling people to hate China and love the US and Japan,” she said.
As Taiwan’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign gained traction this summer following donations from the US and Japan, many Taiwanese posted pictures of their inoculation records on Facebook with the words, “Thank you, Daddy America!”
Critics said Tsai’s administration had fed complacency by highlighting Taiwan’s ever-stronger relations with Washington. “The public will think that we are so safe, America loves us and will come to our rescue when push comes to shove – it takes away the urge to be self-reliant,” said Liu.
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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.